THE DESERTED CHAMBER.
Mabel had been very ill; the sense of humiliation, the outrage on every
feeling of delicacy that had beset her after the fragments of that
vellum book were placed in her hand, fell upon her strength with
terrible effect. To herself, she seemed disgraced forever; the holiest
portion of her life was torn away, to be trodden down by the feet of the
multitude. No sin, however heinous, could have fallen upon her with more
crushing effect. The very maturity of age, which should have so far
removed her from the romance of love, embittered her grief by a sense of
self-ridicule. At times, she felt like reviling and scoffing at
affections that up to this time had been hoarded away from her own
thoughts. For a train of wrong feelings, unaccompanied by a single false
act, save that of her marriage, she was suffering the most terrible
humiliation before God and her own conscience.
Is it strange that her nerves, so long excited and so delicate in
themselves, gave way at last, prostrating her to the earth, strengthless
as a child? She did not leave her room, she scarcely looked up when the
servants entered it, and was so broken and bowed down by the weight of
her shame, that even the absence of her son was disregarded. No criminal
ever shrank from the face of man more sensitively than this high-souled
woman.
It annoyed Mabel to see any one enter her apartments. When the mulatto
chambermaid came there, in the ordinary course of her duties, she would
shrink back in her chair and shade her eyes, as if some hideous spectre
had crossed her path; but, if Agnes Barker entered, this nervous shock
became unendurable, and it was with the greatest effort that she could
refrain from rushing madly into the next room, and holding the door
against her intrusions.
One night--it was that on which James Harrington went out in search of
an explanation from the General--Mabel was more terribly oppressed than
ever; all the bitter recollections of a most tedious life crowded upon
her at once. She longed to flee away into some new place, where human
intrusion would be impossible--and yet Agnes Barker would enter the
room; again and again she saw the poor woman wince and shiver at her
approach, but with malicious servility insisted on arranging her
cushions, and performing all those little services which are so sweet
when love prompts them, yet which fall upon us like insults when
rendered by those against whom our natures are in repulsion. To save
herself from this officious tending, Mabel inquired for the mulatto
woman, preferring her presence to the endurance of attentions so
oppressive.
Agnes smiled sweetly at the inquiry: "but the chambermaid had gone out,"
she said, "and might not be back till late; meantime, it was a happiness
to attend madam--was the cushion comfortably arranged? should she move
the footstool?"
The girl sank upon her knees, and, in moving the ottoman, touched
Mabel's foot with her hand. The excited woman sprang up with a shudder,
as if a rattlesnake had crept across her ankles, and, unable to endure
the presence of her tormentor a moment more, hurried out of the room.
"Is there no place," she said, moving wildly forward, "no place in which
I can hide myself, and snatch a moment's rest? Will these creatures
trail themselves in my path forever and ever!"
The unhappy woman did not even think that she possessed the right to
send the offensive persons at any moment from her presence; for, since
the discovery of her secret, Mabel no longer felt that she was the
mistress of these people, or that she held a power of command anywhere.
All that she wished was to hide herself from every one. Influenced only
by this unconquerable desire, she hurried up the stairs, and taking a
bronze lamp from a statue that occupied a niche in the first landing,
went forward till she came to the door of a chamber that had been
occupied by James Harrington. Here a gleam of intelligence shot over her
pale face, and she eagerly tried the lock. It yielded, and, drawing a
quick breath, she crossed the threshold, turning the key which had been
left inside with an impatient violence, and looked round exultingly at
the solitude which she had thus insured.
"It was here," she said, looking around on the grate and on the table,
while her pale brow darkened and her lips began to tremble; "it was here
that he burned my poor journal--here that he tore the secret from my
soul, while I lay sleeping below. After this cruel pillage of my life,
he fled to hide the----No, no! Scorn he could _not_ feel--hate, pity,
anything but scorn! Let me search if any vestige remains."
She bent over the empty grate, peering through the polished bars with
keen glances, but it was bare and cold; not an ember remained, nor a
grain of dust. The very ashes of her book had been cast forth with the
common refuse. The table was empty, not a paper littered it: a bronze
standish, in which the ink was frozen to a black ice and a useless pen
or two, alone met her search; all was in cruel order. The bed, with its
unpressed pillows smooth as iced snow--the easy-chair wheeled into a
corner of the room--the closed shutters without--everything was
desolate.
Mabel sat down upon the bed, the most dreary thing there; she looked
mournfully around. The wild eagerness died out of her features, and
lowering her face upon the cold pillow, she began to cry like a child.
Directly the chill of the night struck through and through her. She
shivered till the teeth chattered beneath her quivering lips; what with
grief, cold, and exhaustion, the poor lady had become helpless as
infancy. Forgetting where she was, and careless of everything on earth,
she gathered the bed-clothes slowly around her, and shuddered herself to
sleep.